So this is a problem I am having for a while now. When I try to install Ubuntu via the mini.iso the whole installation goes right except that it wont boot (start the command line) after...I just get a black screen with a white blinking _ in the left corner. Sometimes it shows the purple ubuntu bootloader screen before going black again but thats it. It happens with 3D enabled and with 3D disabled. I know my installation is ok because I have a WinXP guest system where 3D and everything is working fine. Any ideas?

You say via vbox PPA, do you mean the launchpad PPA?Regardless 11.10 more that likely will not work on anything lower than 4.1.2 and even then have issue. The next maintenance release will work better.

Hold down the left Shift key when the VM boots. Grub will now appear where you can select the OS or recovery. Press 'e' to edit the normal OS line and remove 'quiet splash' from the kernel parameter line so you will see the boot process (else, it will be very minimal on what you see). Then look at the lines a bit up, it's below recordfail. Change the following:

It's just a simple bug in Ubuntu. I'm surprised that they haven't fixed it yet, it has been there since 10.10. Everything should work fine if you press ALT+F1 (or CTRL+ALT+F1.) It tries to boot into TTY7 which is bugged when there's no graphical login-manager installed. Switching to another TTY solves this so you can login normally.

i would suggest to go for new release of VirtualBOX i.e. 4.1.4 & Ubuntu 11.10 Beta2 Or wait for couple of days as Final release is on 13 Oct 2011.. There are no issues with Ubuntu 11.10 Beta2+ VirtualBox. Some users are facing issues with Ubuntu 11.10 Beta2+ Vmware workstation 8 i.e graphical user interface issue. Check below guide for more help..

eriohm wrote:I see the Ubuntu splash screen and then the screen goes black with a blinking _. However I can connect to the Ubuntu Server over SSH. I have had this problem since I upgraded to Ubuntu Server 11.04.

I have the exact same problem. The only differences are that my host is Debian 6 (Squeeze) and I'm using VBox 4.1.6. I am running Ubuntu server as a guest. It was at version 10.10 and everything was fine. I upgraded to 11.04 and this problem began. I was able to SSH into the server, so I went ahead and upgraded to 11.10, but the issue persists. VBoxAdditions are installed and up to date.

I had a similar problem with the previous VB version when upgrading my Ubuntu 11.04 VM guest to 11.11. I eventually got past that with a /var/[run|lock] trick and by repeating the installation a few times. Then it was running fine again for a while, until yesterday, when I upgraded VB from 4.1.4 to 4.1.6, rebooted the host, tried to fire up the guest VM, and now I'm back at the black screen after grub loads.